Hikoi ki te Hauora and Health Promoting Schools

In Aotearoa / New Zealand, Health Promoting Schools (HPS) is a developing initiative. Schools adopting a HPS conceptual framework consider the wellbeing of young people to be a fundamental prerequisite for learning. The HPS framework suggests that the wellbeing of young people be supported through co-operation and collaboration with the school, family/whanau and the wider community. Within the school, emphasis is placed on:

• The importance of an environment which is safe, physically and emotionally, for all its members
• The formal and informal curriculum, including the implementation of a comprehensive health and physical education curriculum
• A school climate and ethos that cares for and values all those who are involved with the school.

Many schools throughout Aotearoa / New Zealand and internationally have adopted a HPS conceptual framework. Central to this framework are the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles of partnership, participation and protection, the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, and the Ministry of Education National Goals and National Administration Guidelines.

Hikoi ki te Hauora has been developed and piloted within a HPS conceptual framework. Central to the development and implementation of the piloting of Hikoi ki te Hauora has been the involvement of family/whanau and members of the local community of Kaitaia. Community facilitators have been trained to work with health education teachers to enhance the implementation of Hikoi ki te Hauora. There has been considerable value in this model of community support and involvement both for members of the community and for the students.

Safer Streets Trust chairman, Phil Cross, who participated in a trial of the programme at Kaitaia College says, "I believe that we owe our young people an obligation to provide them with the skills necessary to face the challenges each and every one of them will need to come to grips with in their journeys through life. This programme, I believe, does address some of that obligation. It is they who make their own choices; our obligation, is to give them the skills to make those choices the best."

The diagram below shows this conceptual framework and the place of Hikoi ki te Hauora in the context of Health Promoting Schools.